Hello, and welcome to The Back Page A Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, how’s it going? How’s your weekend been? Very good, thank you. I’ve been playing something that I can’t talk about yet because of embargoes. I know what Matthew’s talking about, and it’s exciting, but it’s not that exciting, just to put your minds at ease, listeners. So, yes. Is that a fair description, Matthew? Yeah, it’s probably true. Probably a bit too brutal. Thanks for taking the wind out of myself. Yes. Sorry, that seemed unnecessary. So this week, we have a returning special guest, a third time appearance for Andy Kelly, former colleague of mine on PC Gamer. PSM2, a very popular guest when we’ve had him on the podcast in the past. Andy Last came on a couple of years ago recording in the back of a camper van to do our Dreamcast episode. He was crowdfunding his book, Perfect Organism, an Alien Isolation companion. Sorry, I didn’t have the link open then. I just forgot what the last word was at the end there. Companion is the last word. Now he has finished the book. He’s publishing the book on the 29th of August, so it’s great to have you back, Andy. How’s it going? Hello. Thanks for having me back. Yeah, doing good. Excited to talk about Alien as always. Yeah. We’ve picked a good time for it. I mean, obviously, the book, successfully crowdfunded, great to see it out in the world. I’ve seen you posting copies of it, putting it on your alien shelf, etc. So excited to talk about that. In section one, we’re going to talk a little bit all about the book that Andy’s been working on. Then section two, we’re going to ask Andy about some of his alien takes because I think that having that in audio form will be very enjoyable for the listeners, and it’s a good time because obviously Alien Romulus has just come out. So yes, lots to discuss there. So Andy, how is Devolver Live treating you? You’re obviously a games industry side, much like me these days, doing the marketing thing. I’ve seen you working on various cool projects, launching some of the games over there. How’s it going? Yeah, really good, actually. After being a journalist for so long, it’s nice to be a bit more on the industry side, which is where I always wanted to drift towards at some point. So it’s really cool. It’s working very closely with developers and helping them take in their games and trying to package them up in a way that gets people excited about them. And yes, it’s really fun. And the higher up lords at Devolver pick really interesting games. So there’s never like, I’m never short of something like cool to be, you know, promoting and making sound good. Yeah. That’s exciting. Yeah. I’ve played both Pepper Grinder and Angerfoot this year. I thought they’re both very good. So yeah, some cool devs you got to work with. And you’re about to launch Plucky Squire as well, right? Yeah. That’s the next big one. It’s been in development for a while. And we’ve kind of postponed it a few times just so the developers could polish it to a fine gleam. And it’s looking pretty, it’s looking pretty lovely. So I’m excited to see if people like it as much as I do. I finished it the other day and it’s pretty special. So I would say that though, wouldn’t I? Yeah, you’re in the pocket of big Volvey these days. So have you met Volvey? Oh, Volvey, you know, he’s kept in like one of those Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouses in a box. It just oozes weird liquid and no one opens it or will open it again. In some ways, I think you writing Volvey lore is sort of like the perfect end game for your career. You know, it just somehow just suits you to a tee that. So I was very happy when I got to write a bit of deep lore and sort of shape the character beyond just being a vole with a pair of shiny brogues on, which is what essentially started as. But yeah, nice. Good to hear Andy. So yeah, your book, Perfect Organism, launches on August 29th, like I say. So how closely did you try and land it to the Alien Romulus release date? Is it just a coincidence or were you trying to hit the 10th anniversary of the game? And what kind of led to that particular date? Well, I’d like to say that now I work in PR, that it was an expertly coordinated piece of PR stratagem, but it was a complete coincidence that Romulus came out when it did. And I didn’t even realise it was the 10th anniversary of the game until the book was well, was written and stuff. So it’s complete serendipity, but like the best kind, because Alien Isolation is in people’s brains now, especially after seeing Romulus. So hopefully their brains will then latch onto my book as a result. Nice. So do you want to give us an overview of what the book is and anything you think people might want to know about it? Yeah, so it’s a bit of an odd one. I’ve called it a companion, which is not the most descriptive word. That could mean any number of things, but it’s basically my take on books that used to get a lot in the late 90s and early 2000s, particularly The X-Files had really good companion books. They’re official and they were kind of like episode guides. So you’d get like a bit of a recap of the episode. And along the way, the writer would pull out interesting nuggets about like behind the scenes stuff, or Easter eggs, or cool connections to previous episodes or other TV shows. So it was like kind of like, kind of like a director’s commentary, not by the director, but in a book. And that’s kind of what this is. Yeah, I remember this one. I had, I knew a mate who had a couple of the Buffy ones that he just read cover to cover. Yeah, I kind of missed it. I remember the Simpsons ones as well. Were very popular. Yeah, yeah. The Simpsons ones definitely, that was one of my most prized possessions as a teen, that Simpsons book. And I re-bought it recently off eBay. And like that’s definitely planted the seed many years ago of having like something that you could have and read alongside watching slash playing, you know, something like to kind of, to enrich your experience of playing, of watching it. Nice. So with that in mind, I suppose, how did you approach the writing style? Do you see it as more of like a kind of factual commentary or do you kind of like put opinion in there as well to talk about, to sort of like, you know, a bit of cultural criticism in there, I guess, at the same time. Yeah, it’s kind of like, it’s kind of partly a making of thing. I mean, I wrote a lot of making of features on PC Gamer. It was like my favorite thing to do. So the first chunk of the book is like, looks at the arts, the AI, the level design and like all the kind of aspects of the game, the game’s origins and where it came from and how it was made and how it was pitched. But that’s just a, that’s kind of like the opening salvo of the book. The main chunk of it is the mission, what I’m calling the mission guide. I wish I hadn’t called it the mission guide because some people think it’s like a walkthrough. Like I’ve written a walkthrough 10 years after the game came out and published it as a book. So the wording is confusing, but it’s more like a play along. It’s almost like a, well, like I said, like a director’s commentary. So I’ll walk, I kind of recount the level. And as I do it, I’ll comment on different aspects of it, like a piece of level design or an interesting piece of art, or how like a prop in this particular part of the game is based on one from the movie. And I also talk about the making of the movie quite a bit and how Creative Assembly kind of took the disciplines of the 70s movie makers and back engineered that to make the game. Like lots of interesting stuff, like they drew their concept art using the same tools as like Ron Cobb, the great production designer who was responsible for a lot of aliens’ hard industrial design. They would get into his headspace and imagine they were in the 70s and draw stuff like he would. Or when they were designing props, they would only use bits and pieces that would have been available in 1979. So every all the tools in the game and all the furniture and fantastical sci-fi props are all made as if there were a bunch of guys in a warehouse in Shepperton Studios in the 70s making these things. You know, for the movie. So like, yeah, I mean, that’s really interesting. So it kind of leaps between kind of play through of the game, stuff about the making of, stuff about the making of the movie and just how the levels are. There’s a lot of interconnectivity in Isolation where the levels will call back to stuff from previous levels. So it kind of tracks all that. And that’s the real bulk of the book. Like maybe 80% of the book is this level by level super detailed running commentary by a super fan, i.e. me. Oh, that’s cool. Yeah, I was going to ask how you decided to structure it, but you kind of laid it all out there. So that makes sense. What about in terms of the actual sort of design of the book? How did you decide to sort of break it down so you can cover like a whole bunch of different stuff, you know, piecemeal as you go through the levels? Like how did you figure out the way it was going to be structured in that respect? It’s kind of, I tried to make it quite conversational. So it’s written in a way like I’m kind of talking you through it as if I was like sat playing it and like looking over my shoulder and boring you about it. Rather than like a kind of like really stiffly written matter of fact account of events, it’s quite conversational and I sort of talk about the bit of the feelings you get from certain set pieces. So it’s a mix of like personal anecdotal stuff and facts and trivia pulled from, you know, my 10 years of writing about the game and interviewing developers and everything. So it’s, there’s a real, I mean, there’s a real ton of stuff in there, like every other paragraph, there’s some piece of some nugget of trivia that may not be interesting to some people, but I find it deeply interesting as someone who, you know, finds any morsel of information about that game. I soak it up. So all of that has been dispensed into the pages of this book. You know, obviously you’ve got like an optimal version of playing this game of like going through the levels and like the levels as they play out, if all goes well. Like, do you actually talk about the difficulty or the experience of like failing at the levels? Like, how do you kind of get your head around that? Or are you just so sort of proficient at it now that you can talk about them as these like optimal things that you do? Yeah, I kind of I’m quite honest and certain. I mean, there’s still set pieces in that game or sections because of the level design or the way that the AI is ramped up. There’s like a behind the scenes invisible pressure system that kind of gauges how much pressure the player is under. And then the AI will react according to us. So if you feel like you’ve had a bit of an easy ride for a while, the AI director will Wizard of Oz style, turn some knobs and make the alien more aggressive or whatever. So in the kind of rolling mission guide, I kind of admit that, all right, this bit here is pretty difficult if you don’t do this, if you don’t do that. So it’s like, it’s not like, you know, it’s not like the optimum playthrough by a professional. It’s like, it’s like, all right, fair enough. This bit’s really hard. You’re going to have a bad time here. Yeah. So that’s what I mean about it being quite conversational. Like, it’s not like this is the elite ultimate playthrough. It’s like, it’s quite an honest and natural, you know, dragging you through the game in quite an honest and natural way. I think. Did you make any changes to the way you tackled it as a project between the time you crowdfunded it and the time you started writing it, Andy? Like when you came to actually like properly plan and write it, did anything change along the way from how you originally envisioned it? Yeah, so the original pitch was more of a like, I think I pitched that I was like, I’m going to talk to everyone. I’m going to get every developer, every person, every Fox executive. I’m going to, you know, this is going to be the oral history of Alien Isolation. But then you realize that to do something like that, you’re dealing with Disney or what, you know, which recently absorbed Fox or 20th Century Fox. So it’s kind of like basically impossible to navigate all those NDAs and stuff unless you are working for, you know, as an official arm of the Alien franchise. So that’s when I made the decision. Cause I was like, so I can’t do any new interviews, but I can, I have been doing interviews about that game for 10 years. I’ve spoken to loads of the developers and over that time absorbed tons of interesting information. So I thought, well, it’s going to be, it’s an unofficial book now, which means no like new access, but I still have reams of interesting stuff to say. And so that kind of informed how it was structured. So yeah, that’s just the limitations of working with like something like Alien, like this huge mega franchise, like you have to get approval from like 500 people, and who you may not even be able to get in contact with, or, you know, so it’s, I thought it was just easier. I’m going to make it unofficial, and then I can say what I want as well. You know, I can, I feel, because there’s a, I’m quite, I’m critical of the game in some parts. It’s not pure, I mean, 90% of it is me blowing smoke up its ass and saying how great it is. But there are some bits where I’m being unofficial, I could be critical of certain bits. There’s a few levels that feel kind of a bit scrappier and half finished and not as kind of tightly designed. So when it comes time to play those levels, I’m quite critical of some things that could have been better. So that gave me a bit of freedom there. It’s going to be real heartbreaking for the people who made those levels, who go like, someone’s written a whole book about our game, and then they read it, and it’s the one level they made is like the one bit where you’re like, yeah, this is shit. Yeah, it’s all right. I pull the punches. It’s just a slight mauling. Yeah. Nothing too major. That coming from the man who put no Rare games in his Nintendo Top 50, then got a tweet from Rare about it. So that was rich coming from you, Matthew. So I was going to be one of my questions actually, Andy, is how much you spoke to former CA staff to put it together. You say that you’ve got reams of interviews to draw upon. Did you do any kind of like speaking off the record on background to kind of like talk about that stuff? Just because I feel like just knowing one or two of the developers or people who are linked to that game, there are people who always want to talk about it. Did you have any of that you can talk about? Yeah. I mean, I spoke to lots of developers. I mean, once they got wind of the fact that the book was happening, I got some DMs and some emails. So I’ve confirmed a few things with people just to make sure stuff’s accurate. But in terms of like sitting down with anyone, it just wasn’t feasible. So in the back of the book, there’s a section of all the people that backed it. If you know who made the game and you look for that list of backers, you’ll probably recognize a bunch of names from people who worked on the game. So there was no one involved in a kind of official capacity, but I did check some stuff because I want to get it right. Yeah. It’s a legitimately interesting game to hear war stories on. I mean, we had Will Porter on here a few last year, I think it was. And he just had some great stories about the writing of that game and the process of bringing it together and what that team, that specific console team at CA was like. So yeah, I’m glad to hear you had a little bit of that in the background to help. So did you learn anything new about the game from writing the book, Andy? A lot of the stuff was stuff I already knew. So it was kind of like, I feel like I know a lot of stuff about the game that people don’t. Well, I sort of dumped every single thing I know about the game I dumped into the book. So it could be hard to say how well known some of that stuff is, but I would like to think that anyone who read it, who wasn’t like the most hardcore Alien Isolation fan, would learn something new from it. But it was really a case of taking everything I’d learned over since I first reviewed it in 2014 for PC Gamer. Everything I’ve absorbed from that time till now, it was a case of immersing the book in it and dousing it in every fact I’d accrued over that time. So it’s hard to say really. Yeah, that makes sense because I was there on PC Gamer as you found the different ways to look at that. I know when you left for the game, you did a bunch more there as well. So it’s cool that you have accumulated so much material over the years to pull this together. How was the process of writing the book itself? Was it harder or easier than you thought it would be? And I guess how does it compare to something like writing a series of articles on a website like PC Gamer or in the magazine? How much more difficult is it? Yeah, it was… I mean, the final word count in the book is about 75,000 words. So it was kind of like writing 75 articles for PC Gamer. I just kind of like… In my head, I just… My whole career, I kind of worked in 1000 to 2000 word chunks of writing, so it was just kind of like writing a lot of articles for a website. That’s kind of how I approached it, just because that’s how… That’s the only way I know how to write. But it was… It took like a year to write, and it was originally supposed to be like four months I planned it out for, but I just found… Like if I’m not in the right head space, I find writing quite difficult. Like if I sit down and I’m not on a very specific mindset, like no words will come out onto the page. So that was quite anxiety-inducing, because every time I wasn’t writing, I was feeling guilty for the people who had backed the book, because it’s kind of like you’ve got investors, people who have put their faith in you to write this thing. And if I went a week without writing a word, it would get quite stressful. But yeah, so over the span of a year, I wrote it in bits and bobs, but then I had a real surge of crazy productivity towards the last three months, and I was churning out so many words. By the end of it, I was so burned out. But yeah, it’s harder than you… Even if you really love something, writing 75,000 words about it is quite hard. Even if you know a lot of stuff. Some people would have the luxury of maybe writing a book about a bunch of games in a series, but this was a whole book about one game. And there’s a lot in that game to talk about, but still, that’s a lot of stuff. And I didn’t want it to be full of filler either. I was really driving myself to make it all interesting without sort of rambling and doing that classic SEO article, like filling up words. I wanted every page to have some interesting nugget on it, which probably made it a lot harder, but I think it was worth it in the end. Yeah, so no paragraphs. So when was Alien Isolation released? The answer may surprise you. The date, you’ll find, was actually, yeah, it’s sort of like, if I could never write about that again, I’d be very happy. What about the challenge of, because I find this with all games writing, trying to write about Mario now, I’ve written so much about Mario that I’ve run out of ways of saying like Mario jumps and gets a coin. Like it drives up the wall. Surely, after 75,000 words, there must have been certain words or topics or areas that must have been driving you up the wall, right? Yeah, I caught myself a few times writing some sections of it that I’d already written many articles about and I felt like my brain was switching into autopilot a bit so I had to catch myself there and be like, don’t just say that again. Think about this. Have this thought you’ve had, but try and look at it from a different angle since you’ve already written this thing many times or said this thing many times. So trying to get out of the autopilot thing when covering ground that’s been previously covered was something I had to be aware of constantly. That’s tough. How was the edit process? Because that’s the main reason I think I haven’t written a book is that it’s like rereading your own work is just so daunting when there’s tens of thousands of words of it compared to, you know, like at most probably 5,000 words is the most I’ve ever written in one article, for example. How did you find the edit process generally when it was just that much stuff to actually edit and go through? I’m kind of someone who writes. I know some writers, they’ll like dump all the words on the page and then they’ll go back and refine it. My style of writing is that I won’t move on to the next paragraph until I’ve nailed that paragraph. It’s a really like inefficient way of writing, but I’ve always done it where like, you know, I’m not going to move on to my next point until like I’ve really nailed the previous one. By the time it was finished, because I’d done that laborious process, it didn’t really need much from my perspective. So it was kind of like I was editing as I go. But then it got sent to the publisher, sent it, put it through to professional copy editors, who went through the whole thing and sent like a huge heap of notes on stuff. Mostly just convert fact checking stuff. I was quite happy that there wasn’t much structural editing needed doing. I think both the copy editors said that it was really well structured and that was a relief because I was dreading them being like, right, we want to take this whole point you made and put it here and move this chapter here. Because that would screw everything up. But I was very lucky that structurally it was fine. It was just a lot of grammar, spelling and stuff. And so yeah, it went through to copy editors and then I read it one more final time. Obviously I was seeing a million things I wish I’d done better or elaborated on more. Or if I could go back to it now and add a bunch more stuff, I would. But I think that’s the case with any project like this. I just had to let it go and just make peace with the fact that it was done and it was out there. And now it’s sat in my desk and printed form and it’s now immutable. It cannot be changed. So I’ve got no choice but to live with it. Into the British Library it goes. But that’s okay. You can cover any further ground in the Alien Isolation Companion companion. So I’ll look forward to that project in 2027. So I was curious if you’ve got any friends to read it since you’ve had it back. Have you sort of like given it to anyone to just sort of like give a look or is it being kept kind of under lock and key a little bit? No one’s read it yet. Actually not. A writer from Nintendo Life has read it and just reviewed it and gave it a glowing review. And I think he may be, as far as I know, the first person who’s read it. But the reason was like I could have started sending out copies to all the developers I know and and stuff, but I didn’t because of fear, because it’s terrifying the idea of people reading it. And something being like, I don’t know. I just I’m just I’m just dreading getting an email from a developer gone. That’s not how it happened. Even though everything in the book is based on things developers have said in interviews, every single thing, none of it’s like guest or I didn’t do that thing some books do where they kind of imagine the conversations that happened in the studio and stuff. It’s all based on things people have said. But I still have that fear of like someone going, yeah, this is all wrong. So I’ll see what happens when it comes out. But yeah, I don’t I I I’ve yeah, I almost don’t want people to read it. It’s like, don’t read it. Well, just buy it and put it on your shelf and forget about it. Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be good. I’m looking forward to giving it a look myself in about a week. So that’s really cool. So I’m curious about the game itself. Do you think Alien Isolation has stuck in the cultural consciousness since it released? It was obviously almost famously got that. I think IGN was a six and GameSpot was a seven, something like that. It felt like the two major US outlets didn’t really get it. And then that kind of sunk the game a little bit out of the gates and then didn’t really become, I’m not saying it’s just down to them or that that’s their responsibility necessarily, but that was definitely part of the kind of narrative of how the game was released. How much do you think has snowballed and found new fans over time, Andy? Yeah, I mean, I touch upon the GameSpot and IGN reviews in the book, but I’m very adult about it. I could have easily gone on an Alan Partridge-style retribution rant. I decided to just look at it objectively. I do think that the two biggest gaming sites in the world, as they were at the time probably, giving it a mediocre review, probably damaged its sales. On PC Gamer, I give it 90-something, and a lot of outlets give it high scores. Mine was definitely on the higher end, but I think it did well enough. But I don’t think it has lingered in the collective consciousness of gaming as much as I think it should have. I mean, occasionally people will go, oh, it’s the best horror game of all time. Or if there’s a debate about horror games on Twitter or something, people will talk about Alien Isolation. But I don’t think it’s a game that’s been swirling around in people’s minds constantly for the last 10 years. It seems to drift in and out like some kind of vapor. And I think now, because of Romulus and the fact that Fede Alvarez, the director, has said that the game inspired the movie and there’s lots of visual references to the game and the movie. I think that is making people… I’ve never seen more people talking about Alien Isolation than I have since launch, probably, than I have now. It’s actually just before I came on here, it was trending on Twitter because I think there’s some kind of threads going around about people saying, oh, you’ve got to play… If you liked Romulus, you got to play Isolation. So, that’s good for me because more people playing it means more people may be potentially buying my book. But also, more people playing it is just good in general for me because it’s a game I want to be held aloft with all the greats because I think it is up there with, I say in the book, I think it’s up there with, for me, it’s up there with Half-Life and all the giants as a really singular, one-off, incredible piece of game design. But it’s good to see people caring about it again. Yeah, I think, say it came in and out of the consciousness, it’s quite accurate, I think. There’s some games like The Witcher 3 or Breath of the Wild. Those are obviously monstrously huge successes out the gates and got all the high review scores, the isolation didn’t. Those are games you just see people talking about on social media constantly, but I agree it’s a little bit more sporadic with Alien Isolation. I feel like I see its impact in the way that first-person horror games have become more and more production values behind them. Every now and then I’ll see things that remind me of the Alien in them. I don’t know if you played Amnesia the Bunker, Andy. Did you give that a go? No, I didn’t actually. That’s the only Amnesia I’ve not played, actually, yeah. Yeah, because that has an isolation-esque monster in there, and I feel like maybe it was inspired by similar systems. There’s a little bit of unreliable machinery element to it. There’s a light system, and the way the monster behaves is a little bit unpredictable. It definitely feels like isolation is an influence there. But yeah, I do agree. It’s not like a dead end of game design at all, but it’s often on its own little island a little bit. Yeah, a little bit unusual. At least they put it on Switch. That was cool. Yeah, that’s a really good version, actually. If you’ve got a Switch OLED, definitely play isolation on it because the shadows and stuff look really inky, black, and terrifying. Nice. Yeah, I didn’t realize that was a good version. I don’t think they ever patched the console ones to run at the higher frame rate, which is the thing you get on the PC one that you didn’t get on PS4. I think the Xbox One version might have had a 60 FPS patch. Yeah. I might be wrong there. I think it did. Yeah. Oh, cool. That’s good. But the Switch version has the original console versions are infamous for having loads of jaggies, like really bad case of the jaggies, whereas the Switch version, the developer, Feral Interactive, implemented some new anti-aliasing solutions. So it was weirdly the best looking console version of Alien Isolation. Not in terms of resolution, obviously, but in terms of fidelity, it got rid of the jaggies. Damn. If you hate jaggies, play on Switch. Damn. I look forward to reading the segment in the book about the Switch version. That will be her. That’s good. Cool. Do you think you’d write another book about one game after this and what would you pick if you did? Shenmue, easily. Really? Yeah. I’d love to write a similar thing for Shenmue because I think that’s the only game apart from Alien Isolation that really has permeated the real depths of my subconscious and I think about a lot and replay at least once a year. So I’d like to do something on Shenmue, like a kind of really deep dive into, I mean the same as the Alien book, like a deep dive into its art and the AI stuff and design, look into its making of and hopefully, we talk to Yusuke about it. But I’d love to write something, but only on the original Shenmue. The sequels I like, but the original game is like for me, a real special moment in gaming, so I’d love to write a book about that. But I mean that’s possibly even more of a niche prospect in an Alien Isolation book. Maybe I should write a book about Call of Duty or something. Get more people reading it. But that’s exactly the kind of thing that people would back on a platform like Unbound or wherever you might crowdfund it. So I do think it’s a good fit. You might even be able to get Sega to give you sort of like the license or whatever to kind of go with it because I think there may be, it’s probably a bit easier to get them to wrangle that than it is to wrangle like a 50 year old movie property or whatever. So yeah. Definitely. I doubt there’s as many NDA entanglements with Shenmue as there is with Disney owned Alien. So yeah. Well, I hope you get to do that. And yeah, is there anything else you wanted to say about the book, Andy, before we get you to blast the Internet with Alien takes? Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, not really. Like, I guess if if you played and loved the game, you’ll get a lot out of it if you a lot of people have said they physically can’t play the game because it’s too scary. So the book kind of acts as like a way of experience. You can sort of experience it vicariously for the book because I walk you through each mission and the story beats. And so it’s kind of like if you want to experience the Alien Isolation storyline, but you don’t want to play it because you find it too harrowing an experience and you can read the book and it’s kind of, you know, you’ll get the you’ll come out of it knowing what happened and, you know, what happened to the story of Amanda Ripley and all that stuff. So I used to use the Simpsons episode guide to lie about episodes I hadn’t seen to my friends in the UK yet. So some of the readers of the book can do that. That’s good advice. Yeah. Yeah. I love the bit with Flick’s book to the end, like two aliens turn up. That would be very good. Okay, cool. Do you think you can stand to play Alien Isolation again after this, Andy? Like, do you think you need a little bit of time away? Do you think you’ve got another playthrough in you before you expire from this earth? Well, I just started a new playthrough last week, so I was getting excited about Alien Romulus, and I thought I’m going to replay Isolation. I’m in the middle of rewatching all the films as well, so I’m full on. I’ll never get bored of it. Nice. Well, Andy’s book, Perfect Organism and Alien Isolation Companion, is available in hardback and also e-book as well. You can preorder that for 10 pounds e-book, just 10 pounds hardback, obviously, a little bit more, at unbound.com/book/perfectdashorganism, if you want to read a bit more about it. So if not, just Google Perfect Organism, Alien Isolation Book, and it will come up. But yeah, awesome, Andy. I can’t wait to give it a read. All right. Let’s take a quick break then, and we’ll come back and talk about the Alien series at large. Welcome back to the podcast. So in our planning document for this episode, I’ve just written section two, colon, ask Andy about some of his alien takes, because I think that’s kind of what our listeners would like to hear from you, Andy, because they see your tweets every now and then, your rankings, and then your rankings changing, and they’re definitely curious to hear more. And so I thought it was a good opportunity to talk about Alien at Large. So I’ve not seen Alien Romulus yet. I’m seeing it just after this at nine o’clock. So I’m excited about it. But how did you find the film? What are your spoiler-free thoughts on it? Yes. So I saw it at 11 a.m. when the date came out because I just had to get it done and not have it spoiled. Because I didn’t watch any trailers or anything. I went in completely nude, so to speak. And it was really good. I thought it’s quite derivative in a way a lot of reboots and soft sequels and stuff are these days. But I didn’t mind that too much. And there was a little, a few too many winks at the camera, including one kind of real eye roller of a line of dialogue. I’ll be interested to see if you, I shouldn’t have planted that seed in your mind now because you probably sat watching on why when’s that coming. But you know every single line. Yeah. But I’ve come out of the gate with a negative there. I think I think it’s beautiful looking, really incredible production design. It really it goes back to the greasy industrial lived in the horrible space squalor of the original film. Like you know you can almost when you see the Nostromo, you can almost smell it, you know, the sweat of the crew and stuff. It comes back to that and there’s a really some great stuff in terms of set, the set design and all that is like it feels really, you can tell a lot of it was built. I get disappointed with a lot of films and especially TV shows these days have clearly this actor stood on one of those volumes, the big curved LED screen and you can tell it’s convincing enough, whereas this felt really physical. For me, the biggest part of why I love the original Alien for me is the set design and the sense of place and the atmosphere and they’ve really nailed that. There’s some really inventive set pieces. They take the concept of the Alien, which everyone knows the gestation and birth stuff. You know how a facehugger behaves, you know how a xenomorph behaves. What Fede Alvarez did really brilliantly is take what you know about the Alien and how it behaves and its strengths and weaknesses and used it to make some really inventive and interesting set pieces. I’m trying to be very careful not to spoil here, but there’s an Android character in it who, continuing the tradition of Alien movies, is one of the best characters in it, probably possibly the best character. So he joins Ash and Bishop and David as a really great character, a really standout character and a great performance. No love for Walter. Is he the Covenant one? Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Of course. Yeah. David too. He’s got big beta energy, Walter, I would say. He’s sort of like, yeah. I thought he was called, whenever he watched, I was like, this motherfucker is called Walter? What? I don’t remember that. Yeah. David shows him how to do the fingering. Yeah. I also forgot Cole from Resurrection, but you know. It is what it is. That’s interesting. Yeah. Good Android, which I think is like a, it should be a staple of an Alien movie. Female protagonist, hard industrial setting and cool Android. So I really liked it. I think for all the flaws of all the Alien sequels, everyone is different in some way. Whereas this is the first Alien sequel that feels like, let’s do that again, which I think makes it a little bit less special for me, because whatever you think of Prometheus, or Resurrection or Alien 3, they’re all wildly different from all the other films. But this is like, let’s just do the stuff people like again, which is fine because I like that stuff, but maybe it just lacked a little bit of that feeling of taking the series into somewhere new and chartered territory. That was something I definitely wanted to ask you about, was just how the idea of an homage is a new and different thing. In a sense, it’s something they haven’t done before, so you could argue maybe there’s a little bit of invention to that, of tapping into something in this series you actually haven’t seen before, because it’s not what the sequels in these films actually do. But yeah, I can see as well why that maybe rubs a tiny bit of the shine off of it. Matthew, you’ve seen it, right? Did you want to ask Andy anything about it? Because we’re going to talk about it on our Patreon episode this month, but I wondered if you wanted to get into your thoughts on it at all. It’s tough without spoiling it. I agree with a lot of what Andy said. I don’t know, I definitely responded just to the sheer competence of it. Because it’s just really well made, like as a physical bit of filmmaking and like super clear, like the editing is really clear and it’s really easy to follow. And all the things I’d want to talk about are like massive spoilers, annoyingly. Like I would love to hear your thoughts another time about the final act. But I feel like that’s one for another time. Okay, well look, that’s only whet my appetite even more, so I can’t wait to see it. But okay, so going to the series at large, Andy, I saw you put Aliens after Alien 3 in your rankings of the film on Twitter. Is that a take you’ve been brewing for a little while? How long has that been in the upper? I hate that I like, I almost hate that I like Alien 3 as much as I do because it’s such a like contrary opinion, isn’t it? Oh, Alien 3, the one that everyone hates. Oh, it’s good actually, but I want to make it clear that it comes from a place of pure unfiltered sincerity. I like a lot of Alien 3, it’s brilliant. And I rewatched it recently because I was in, occasionally I catch myself and go, is that actually that good? And it is that good, I think. Do either of you like Alien 3? Or are you kind of neutral on it? Go on, you first, Matthew. I’ve seen both cuts, but I cannot for the life of me track down the, the whatever they call it, assembly cut. Yeah, I don’t have a physical copy of it. I have seen it because there’s stuff in it that I know I’ve seen. So like the last two watches of it, I’ve watched the theatrical cut. And I really like Charles Dance in it, and I really like the stuff between her and Charles Dance. But then I’m like more generally I’m a bit, I kind of like the, the not, my hot take is I kind of like the non-alien bits of the alien films. Like before the alien turns up and fucks everyone up, I just kind of like the sci-fi world and seeing characters in it. And so Ripley and Charles Dance, that really works for me. I think the actual like alien stuff and the alien set pieces in Alien 3, I think are quite a bad hang. I really hate that set piece where they’re trying to catch the alien and they’re all just running around tunnels shouting and it kills like five characters, all bald men, all incredible actors who get like one line each. And the line is like, close door, Ray! And then the alien fucking pops their head and you’re like, what the fuck is going on in this scene? That’s my like big, my big beef with it. Yeah, I think it’s, I, what I find I like more about it each time I watch it is the the the array of actors in it and the unusual sort of like hangs in it. So definitely, I’m definitely spoiling one of my takes, I’m saving for that Patreon episode there. But I feel like Brian Glover was never supposed to meet Sigourney Weaver on screen. That’s something that just seems incorrect. Like this former British wrestler and like Kez Man, Kez Teacher, and who is known for that. Like speaking to Sigourney Weaver just seems incorrect somehow. It’d be like if Robert De Niro was in a scene with Deidre from Coronation Street. It’s just something a bit wrong about that, but that is also why I think it’s very appealing. It’s that it’s just all of these very distinctive British actors, this ensemble. Yeah, in this very distinctive, it’s the right idea for a setting for an Alien film, but it does just feel very hacked together in a way that I just, I can’t stop thinking of it as fundamentally flawed, even with the assembly cuts, like quite well judged changes, like mostly just the different way the Alien emerges and the way, and where they find Ripley on the beach at the start. Yeah, I like it slightly more each time I watch it, Andy, but I don’t think I could ever put it over Aliens. Do you want to say anything more about why you love that film? Yeah, I mean, I love Aliens as well, but I think Aliens for me is like, in a way that a lot of James Cameron films are, it has a bit of like an undercurrent of like hope to it. Oh, maybe, you know, maybe they’ll be all right, you know, and at the end they are all right, you know, they save the little girl and they escape and everything seems fine. But then I like the Alien 3 sets its, sets its kind of puts its cards on the table and it’s kind of bleak nihilism and goes, actually, fuck that, she’s dead. Everyone’s fucked again. Welcome to hell. Like I kind of, I like the bleak nihilism of Alien. I like it when it’s like there’s a hopelessness to it. And I think that like setting it on the grimest planet in the galaxy, in a prison populated by bold English character actors being as gnarly as they can. It’s just like, it’s just brilliant. Like it just takes, I just like that ambiance of like dread and darkness and that subdued atmosphere. And I think like, you know, David Fincher is amazing at grime. Like you look at Seven or Fight Club, they’re some of the grimiest, most disgusting films. Like you know, the house on Soap Street in Fight Club and all the crime scenes in Seven. And I think like you see the beginnings of that in Alien 3, like the prison is a real shithole and it’s all like crawling with bugs and it’s all like abandoned. And so I think like I like that about it. I think yeah, gives like a real new hell for Ripley to go through after like the kind of joyfulness of Aliens. Maybe I’m just a nightless steeped down, but I kind of like that it’s like, let’s make Alien miserable again after all that gung-ho. Get away from her, you bitch. Yeah, excitement. Aliens really goes up and up and up and like you get really elated at the end when they escape and everyone’s fine. And she puts the little newton, the cryo sleep chamber and everything’s going to be fine. And Alien 3 just comes in and bulldozes that shit. Yeah, shit sad again. But I mean, Aliens is a great film. But I think also I like about Alien 3 is that it’s one alien. Alien Aliens by its very, by the names, the clue pits the Marines and Ripley against lots of them. I think it’s better when there’s one of them. And I think that Alien 3 goes back to the idea of one, one of these beasts being enough, being enough of a perfect organism to be dangerous on its own without working in numbers. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you are right, though. Like, it’s this cult object. It’s like almost like the ultimate contrarian take, isn’t it? The Alien 3 is like the best film or better than these films or whatever it might be. Like, men have built entire personalities. No, nations on that take. So, yeah, I do get that. I think as well, like, it’s trouble production is probably part of why it persists as a cult object as well, like the documentary and stuff like that. I’m guessing you’re pretty fixated on the behind the scenes of it as well, Andy. I wish there was more out there, but I think since David Fincher did everything, but put Alan Smithy on the directed by, I think, like, information about the production is quite limited and limited to that documentary. But I really wish someone would do like a real tell all expose with input from Fincher about the making of that film. But he seems to have like kept it at arm’s length for his whole career. I doubt he’d want to talk about it ever. It’s very much like David Lynch talking about June, like it’s too much too painful to do what was. I think David Lynch said it. June was a sadness and that he doesn’t want to speak about it. So I think there’s a great book or something there about the making of Alien 3. But I just wish there was more. I’ve absorbed every bit of behind the scenes stuff I can find. But it’s not enough. Like I feel the full picture hasn’t been painted yet. Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s that’s fair. I share your anxiety to see Fincher talk about it. But he’s been so successful. He just doesn’t have to. That’s the thing. It’s just yeah, if you make Zodiac, then you don’t have to answer for Alien. You don’t have to go banging on about it to scream around or whatever. So yeah, makes sense. Where do you stand on Resurrection these days, Andy? Oh, Resurrection. That is such a such a strange film. But I think it gets a lot of things right. It gets something right that I think Romulus doesn’t get right. And the ensemble cast are a bunch of scruffy, distinct oddballs. Whereas I think in Covenant, Prometheus to a lesser extent and Romulus, that the main ensemble cast aren’t that distinctive or interesting, really. Whereas Resurrection, you know, that crew of oddballs is like, I think that captures a bit of the original film, where all of the crew are like quite, you know, quite some offbeat casting, I think, in that original film. I mean, to populate a sci-fi movie with people who look like Harry Dean Stanton, wearing a sweaty baseball cap and stuff is like a really interesting part of Alien, whereas I think the cast of Romulus are all a bit too squeaky clean and not, aren’t defined enough from each other. I think that’s something Prometheus did as well, like the crew of the Prometheus are some of the biggest assholes in that series, like really unlikable people, but you remember them, like you remember, you remember Five Field with his mohawk in his head tatters, and you remember the nerdy biologist who touches the snake, even though that’s a terrible idea and stuff like that. So yeah, I think, I mean, and there’s some really great production design of Resurrection, like the ships and the research base and the costumes. It’s like a really sumptuous, interesting looking film. But I think the plot is dogshit and the alien isn’t very interesting in it, but it did some interesting stuff and there was some kind of subtle callbacks to it in Romulus. That’s another thing to whet your appetite, Sam. Resurrection, possible connections, but yeah. I don’t know what to make of it. What do you two think of Resurrection? I love the sets of it. It reminds me of watching something like Batman and Robin, where you’re like, well, I mean, Resurrection is not as bad as that, but the film is dogshit, but you miss that era of soundstage-y feeling, blockbusters, you know, and just things physically being there. You really get that from Resurrection. It’s the ripply part of it, that makes the film too disjointed for me. They just don’t have a handle on what they’re really doing there, even though they’ve got Sigourney Weaver looking great and being like, she’s like late 90s Galaxy Quest Sigourney Weaver. It’s almost a waste that they had her and then just have this weird sarcastic version of her. What about you, Matthew? After three films of ripply having this incredibly traumatic relationship with the alien and the aliens, to suddenly have her, not on its side, but in a dialogue with it and the fact that she can smirk about it, where the thing that defines that character is that she’s the only person who understands how fucking nightmarish it is. I don’t know, I just think they do her too dirty with that. It’s quite a thing to go over. In the end of it, that fucking milky alien thing is just the dumbest, dumbest bullshit. At least they CG’d out the genitals they gave it. That’s something I read about in the making of that film. That’s probably pushed out some much more useful information. They apparently did some sort of genitalia that the studio were like, get that the fuck out of the film. I was just like, again, I’ve probably forgotten the French word for ice rink or something as a result of that. But yeah, Andy, I did want to ask about Prometheus and Covenant as well. I hope it doesn’t offend you for me to put these together. Have they improved for you over the years or soured? How much you think the film’s function is an actual pair? I watched Prometheus last night actually, because there’s some interesting stuff from Romulus that had me thinking about some stuff in Prometheus. I think Prometheus is, I was looking back at my tweets when I first saw it in the cinema, and I remember thinking it was bad and I hated it. Now, having watched it at least twice a year since it came out, I think I actually love it now. I think it’s a brilliant film. It’s got some amazing fucked up body horror in it, like the medical pod scene, and it’s got an annoying, a very annoying cast, but an interesting cast, some good performances. The visuals are just stunning all the way through, the engineers and the engineer planet and all the murals and the giant head and the black goo and everything. It’s full of really striking imagery, big ideas about like, and I think it’s interesting that they talk about like, start thinking about the alien as like a larger mythology and a mythos and tying human beings into it. Yeah, I just think it’s a great film. There’s some stuff in it like everyone talks about like, why didn’t she run sideways and all that? But I love it. I think it’s up there with the best films in that series. I think what I like about your takes on Alien, Andy, is that it’s not just the usual kind of like stuff that people talk about the Internet. I think you are mega invested in like, the craft of like the CG and the world design, the production design. That stuff is definitely a part of your criteria, right? Is that part of the reason you love Prometheus 2? It just feels so lavish in that respect. Yeah, I think like, I mean, what Matthew said about not really being as interested in the alien and the alien movies, I definitely fall into that camp. Like for me, it’s a totally fascinating and evocative setting and like Prometheus expands on that setting and some really visually interesting ways. Now, I love that they use some old, unused Geiger concept art from the original movie to design stuff in Prometheus, like the kind of chamber that houses the ship is based on an old Geiger painting he did whilst making the first movie. So it’s got real connective tissue with the original production design. But yeah, I think I mean, and Covenant as well is another visually really impressive film. But I think it’s less interesting that the kind of the idea, the ideas are smaller. I think you see too much of the alien, a CG alien in full brightly lit settings. The alien should always be dripping out of the shadows and just be seeing glimpses of it or its tail flickering behind a doorway or whatever. Whereas at the end of Covenant, it’s just full on running about like a big video game monster. It’s just like, it’s not scary at all. But Covenant’s fine. I don’t hate it, but Prometheus is really snaking up that list. Maybe one day it’ll even be like my second favorite. I thought it would, you know. Maybe it’s just getting there. It’s crawling there slowly. Ridley’s been playing a long game. Are you excited about the upcoming TV show from Noah Hawley, Andy? This is called Alien Earth, I believe. I actually saw he had some interview quote about it this week where he was saying, if you want a great TV show set in this universe, I’ll give you something special. I think it’s about working class people in this universe. Is that something you’ve had your eye on as well? Yeah. I’ve not read too much about it, but I love Fargo and I think the idea of a serialized show set in that universe that’s more about people and the day-to-day functioning of that universe is super interesting to me. Even if the alien is only in one episode, I’m fine with that. I just want to be in the boots of someone who works for this hyper-capitalist sci-fi dystopia and see the inner machinations of Will and Yutani and stuff. I think Alien Isolation did that well with the Seegson Corporation, which are like a shit Will and Yutani. Their androids aren’t as realistic, their spaceship engines aren’t quite as fast. I like the idea of seeing other glimpses of the outside of the monopoly of Will and Yutani. That’s again an interesting part of Alien for me, is that setting. So if the show focuses on that more than people being chased around by aliens, then I’m into that. I also like the idea that they’re not trying to do, between Romulus and this, they’re not trying to tie them together. It’s not like a Marvel thing where it’s like, we’re gonna tell some larger, that wouldn’t have worked. I’m dreading that. I really don’t want Alien to get Star Wars’d and get to the point where there’s just two, you know, I was enjoying the Star Wars spinoff TV shows until it became Endless Star Wars. Like, I grew fond of Star Wars in its absence. Now, it’s never absent. It’s just always there. It’s just background radiation. So I really hope Alien doesn’t become, like, Star Wars-ified in that sense. I was listening to a bit of a podcast with Noah Hawley, and it was quite interesting hearing him talk, because I think his show is a prequel even to Prometheus. And so you’re like, well, is there not going to be an alien in it then? Like, if that’s like pre-there being aliens around. And he’s just like, oh, no, I’ve got a different take on, like, when aliens were around. You know, I’ve talked to Ridley, and we just kind of disagree about it. And that’s fine. So I’ve displayed my show about this. So I don’t think he even cares about being coherent with what’s going on in the films necessarily. That’s a guy who’s very comfortable with disagreeing with the original creators of a film that his TV shows are based on. So he’s got some form there. Yeah, what I like about, I think we’ve identified there, Andy, with the Star Wars stuff. I think what I like about the difference here is Noah Hawley, Freddie Alvarez, they’re very distinctive creators with their own sort of like ideas and they’ve kind of kept to the old alien thing of like, you hired a director to give you a certain vision. I mean, granted, you might have mangled it in the case of Fincher’s Lady in Three, but in general, they’re very director driven films, aren’t they? So the idea that like, you know, the star of these things is almost, is the director more than any kind of actor or larger franchise project is quite encouraging. So, yeah, yeah. I do want to ask you, Andy, about Alien games as well. Are there any truly alien or aliens games that aren’t Isolation, do you think? I think we talked about the DS game Infestation previously, but I wondered if in writing the book, you revisited anything else or had more of a hand crane to play like the Alien Resurrection game on PS1 or whatever. Yeah, I mean, there’s a section in the book where I kind of give a parted history of Alien games going back to like the late 80s, all the way up to now. And I played a bunch of them, and I think like none of them really, actually, I don’t think any of them really capture the feeling of the original film. They’re all rooted in the Cameron film, which makes sense because that’s more easily transferable to a video game. And there’s a really early Atari game where you’re kind of viewing a blueprint of the Nostromo and you’re guiding the crew around, away from the Alien, and they’ve got like different mental states where they can get terrified and stop responding to you and stuff like that. Weirdly enough, one of the first Alien games is the one that more kind of captured the feeling of the original film, but I don’t really like many, I don’t love many other Alien games. Infestation on a DS is a really interesting take on it. Resurrection on PS1 has really become a bit of a cult hit and quite inspirational to a lot of indie horror games because it was doing some interesting stuff with low poly and atmospherics and, but yeah, I think Isolation just really stands quite firmly on its own as like the Alien game. And I’d be, there’s rumors floating around at the moment of a sequel, which I think are taken with massive barrels of salt, but I feel like it’s kind of crazy that Sega didn’t iterate on that original because there’s so much there to like improve on, but it’s been 10 years and nothing. So that’s a real shame, I think. Yeah. And I think that team is the one that morphed into that, the one that made that shooter that got cancelled last year, Hyenas, which is kind of like the opposite really of what Alien Isolation was, just, you know, single player sort of like narrative driven, big sort of AI ideas versus hero shooter, that maybe felt a little bit too familiar compared to other games. But yeah, yeah, I share your sort of lack of satisfaction with the fact that they’ve just never tapped into it again, Andy. I’m really curious to know over time, like, if releasing it on Switch and just catalog sales have kind of made it into maybe more of a long tail hit. But yeah, I do, just one more pun would have been nice, but yeah, interesting. Okay, so any other alien takes you want to get off your chest, Andy, while we got you on the podcast? Well, I mean, speaking of Alien Games, if you want to play a game that captures the essence of the original movie, but it’s not an Alien game, and play a horror game called Duskers, have either of you played Duskers? Yeah, I’ve played a little bit actually, because I remember when I think you and Chris Livingston on PC Gamer were both playing it. And yeah, I think you said it captured the vibe of it very, very well. Yeah, it’s kind of like a, it’s all the, it’s like the whole game is presented as like a 70s style retro futuristic computer interface, very primitive, lots of glowing shapes and, and screen fuzz and grain. And it’s all about kind of navigating drones through derelict spaceships by like taking control of the systems and opening doors and vents and these drones go through. But occasionally the ship will have like an alien in it, and like the tension of being trapped in the ship, one of these things and having to use the systems and vents and those to guide it around and avoid it. I think atmospherically and visually, and in terms of like scariness, it’s like it’s up there with isolation and it really feels like the best alien game that’s not an alien game. It’s really, it’s all, it’s quite unusual. It’s all guided, it’s all controlled by typing in commands. So you have to like memorize commands for these drones, which again taps back into the 70s thing. Like there’s a keyboard clacking sound when you type and it makes you feel like you’re, it’s like you’re viewing a screen on the Nostromo, you know, a whole game of that. It’s really, really cool. But yeah, if you, if you want an alien game that’s not an alien game, check out Duskers. It’s on Steam, it’s really good. It’s quite cheap as well, I think. Oh nice, yeah, it’s been around for a few years now, so that makes sense. Oh yeah, I guess I should ask you actually, alien or alien directors cut and aliens or aliens directors cut. Do you have a stance on that? Yeah, I don’t really, I’m not a fan of the directors cuts purely because I think they add a lot of superfluous stuff that was cut probably for a reason, like the egg morphing scene in the original I think is unnecessary and kind of rewrites the lore in a bit of a confusing way. And I think that, yeah, I just think that’s too long, I think, and just it feels like they were just, we have got the footage lying around, might as well jam it in. I think the original cuts are pretty much bang on. Yeah, that makes sense. I had one other question. Given your love of Prometheus, I wondered where you stood on the tech aesthetic of Prometheus and Romulus being a bit more futuristic compared to like later in the timeline. You kind of lose some of that chunky aesthetic. It’s a bit more like hologram maps and things. Does that bother you? Yeah, I think, I think, well, yeah, Prometheus definitely has lots of floating holographic UI elements, which I think looks bad, especially since it’s set before Alien. But I thought, I actually wrote from what I remember of Romulus. It was all chunky screens and even like replicated some of the UI stuff or, you know, fiction. I should remember, I watched it like a week ago. Yeah, I think, I think, I don’t think there was any holographic stuff in Romulus. I think they went fully back to CRT. Oh, Romulus, sorry, yeah, I was thinking more Covenant, sorry. Oh, yeah, yeah. Prometheus and Covenant, not Romulus. Well, that’s what was great about Romulus. Yeah, it’s full on CRT screens and chunky computers. But yeah, I think the holographic stuff was very, it’s going to age Prometheus, whereas I feel like you think that that old tech would age Alien, but for some reason, it just has this kind of like hard utilitarian feel to it that kind of just feels quite timeless, whereas like stuff when Idris Elba was flying the Prometheus and there’s all like things floating around his head, it just feels quite, but it’s going to age that film, I think. It doesn’t really fit in with the vibe of the universe either. I’m not sure if it was unusual that Ridley was like, I want holograms everywhere, when he was so good at like establishing that original aesthetic. Yeah, that makes sense. So the thing I couldn’t get in my head when I was watching Prometheus last week was like the arc of Idris Elba’s character, like going to this alien world, everything going wrong, him having sex with the Charlize Theron robot, and then like sacrificing himself, like what a week for that guy, you know, that’s kind of how I just couldn’t get it out of my head It was Christmas as well, like at one point he’s setting up a Christmas tree, and then it’s that really weird detail where he’s playing like an accordion, and he says, oh, this was once owned by Stephen Stills, you know, of Crosby, Stills and Nash. I thought, what a bizarre little bit of world building. But I kind of liked that because it had a bit of that idiosyncratic thing with the original alien crew, all kind of odd balls. I liked that Idris Elba’s character had a little bit of that like strangeness about him. Yeah, definitely. I think I do agree with the take, that the humans that populate the film is a much bigger reason why the films end up working or not working than I maybe thought they were when I first watched the films. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Okay, Andy, well, we promoted the book already, Perfect Organism, out now. Where can people get you on social media, Andy? I’m ultra-billiant on Twitter, Blue Sky, Instagram, everywhere basically. If you want to see some more stuff about the book or ask me any questions about it, then you can get me there and you can go to perfectorganismbook.com to buy it. Nice. There was also an extract that went up on PC Gamer last week, right? So if you want to read a bit, they can go do that now, is that right? Yeah, that’s the first. The mission guide I was talking about, the level-by-level walkthrough, I gave PC Gamer the first level from that, so you can go and get a taste of the structure I’ve been trying to describe on the podcast here and if you like the sound of it, there’s one of them for every level in the game and every DLC level as well. Good on, Wes. Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks, Andy. Give us a couple more years. We’ll think of another excuse to get you back on the podcast, but thanks so much for your time and look forward to having you back another time. Matthew, where can people get you on social media? I am at MrBazzill underscore pesto on Twitter and at MrBazzill pesto no underscore on blue sky. Cool. I’m Samuel W. Roberts on both Twitter and blue sky, Back Page: Pod as well if you want to find us on either of those. That’s us done. Catch you later. Bye bye. Bye.